Barrel diplomacy

What US control of Venezuelan oil means for India and the world

- PUJA DAS, NEW DELHI

EARLY IN the morning of January 3, US forces entered Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro along with his wife, Cilia Flores.

Hours later, US President Donald Trump declared that Washington was now effectively in control of the South American nation. Speaking at his private club Mara-Lago a day later, Trump said US oil majors would “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure”, signalling a US-led overhaul of Venezuela's oil sector.

The announcement comes against a stark backdrop: Venezuela holds about 303 billion barrels (one barrel equals nearly 159 litres) of crude oil—about 18 per cent of the world's proven reserves, as per the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Yet it produces barely one million barrels a day, about 0.8 per cent of global supply, a fraction of the 3.5 million barrels per day it pumped at its peak in the late 1990s.